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Jackie Mason Quote

AS QUOTED I
have enough money to last me for the rest
of my life. Unless I buy something.

Jackie Mason

IN THE
SPOTLIGHT A Student
Threepeat J eanette Maier-Lytle and her
team of talented young CPAs-to-be from the
University of Southern Indiana set a new record in
achievement by winning the state CPA societys
Case Study Competition for the third year in a
row. The threepeat performanceby this years team
of seniors May Flores, John Hayden, Adam Knepp and
junior Amy Oglesbyoffered up a 63-page report on
peer review put together in just 10 days. It
suggested using a peer review certification
process similar to the ISO 9000 quality standard
of manufacturing companies. Firms certified in
this way could go through peer review every five
years instead of every three.

Maier-Lytle says practicing the presentation in
front of her fellow professors and the local
Kemper CPA Group helped sharpen and prepare the
team. Flores, a second-year team member whos
already been hired by KPMG, says her membership in
Toastmasters also gave her an edge. The students
told the JofA the experience taught
them to work as a team under strict time
pressuresa lesson that no doubt will come in
handy around tax time next year.

Cheryl Rosen

BUSINESS TRENDS Beware the Blog
logging can be a risky business.
Unmanaged blogs dwarf e-mail and instant
messaging (IM) in terms of risk to
companies, according to the American
Management Association (AMA). Hazards
include legal claims such as copyright
infringement, invasion of privacy,
defamation and sexual harassment, security
breaches such as trade-secret theft and
financial disclosures, public relations
disasters, productivity drains and records
mismanagement.

However, while 76%
of companies have adopted policies for
e-mail usage and content and 31% have IM
policies in place, only 9% control
workers use of business blogs and just
7% govern the content employees may post
on their personal blogs, according to a
2006 survey by the AMA and the ePolicy
Institute.

*Based on number of payments and time required to
file taxes and total tax rate. Source:
Paying TaxesThe Global Picture,
World Bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT A
Peck of Jalapenos es not
quite Peter Piper, but retired CPA Richard LeFevre
picked up a $2,000 prize purse by popping 247
pickled jalapeno peppers at the Jalapeno Eating
World Championship at the Texas state fair.

LeFevre, who hails from Henderson, Nev., has
been competing in contests sponsored by the
National Federation of Competitive Eating since
2002. This latest eventwhich he completed in
eight minutesset a new record.

Contemporary Issues in Financial
Reporting: A User-Oriented Approach
by Paul Rosenfield, former
director of the AICPA accounting
standards division, and Business
Fairy Tales: Grim Realities of
Fictitious Financial Reporting
by Cecil W. Jackson, a University of
Southern California accounting
professor, examine ethics and
accountability in contemporary business
reporting. Using very different
approachesthe first is an accounting
history textbook, the second a
mass-market history of recent
eventsboth CPA authors look at issues
underlying a parade of financial
reporting scandals and offer tools for
refining critical thinking. They are
voices in the dialogue of setting things
right, and their concern is a measure of
how deeply the financial world has been
wrenched in recent years.

Michael Hayes

SURVEY SAVVY Staying Power
odays
workers may change companiesor even careersmany
times, but too much job hopping still looks bad on
a resume, according to a survey of 1,400 CFOs.
Most said they took into account how long a job
candidate had spent with previous employers, and
an overwhelming majority (87%) rated loyalty as a
very or somewhat important factor in the hiring
process.

SURVEY SAVVY The Paycheck Doesnt
Lie
merican workers are pretty confident in
their organizations payroll and
accounting departments. According to the
American Payroll Associations
Getting Paid in America survey,
90.6% of employees were certain their
withholding and net amounts were correct
each payday. Plus, 85% said they trusted
that their employer adequately protected
their personal informationsalary or
wages, Social Security number and bank
account numbersfrom identity theft.

BUSINESS TRENDS
Bringin  Home the Bacon omen in
management, business and financial operations
earned more than those in any other occupational
category, with a weekly average pay of $847 in
2005, according to the U.S. Department of Labor
and the Census Bureau.

BOOKMARKS
Stay on Track
Managers spend an average of
seven hours a week sorting out personality
conflicts among staff members, said a
survey of 150 senior executives in the
human resources, finance and marketing
departments of the nations 1,000 largest
companies.

Here are some common
office troublemakers and how to manage
them:

Blusterer. Finds everything
amusing and is unaware that voices carry
to other cubicles. Solution
: Encourage workers to keep their voices
down during conversations or to find an
empty conference room for discussions.

Ghost. Performs a
disappearing act. Solution :
Let everyone know how important it is to
be accessible, whether out on official
business or not.

Foodie. Distracts others
with microwave popcorn and reheated
leftovers. Solution : Remind
firm members that it is inconsiderate
and distracting to eat pungent foods at
their desks.

Pessimist. Delights in
dishing about the hardships of the
business or the foibles of top
management, especially around new hires.
Solution : Talk to this
person individually and try to stem the
negativity.

SURVEY SAVVY Partners Pose Info
Security Risk Heres one to share with
your business- owner clients: Nearly 75% of
responding companies said their information
security risk had increased because of their
business partners, according to a survey of more
than 200 businesses worldwide by security
consulting company Cybertrust (
www.cybertrust.com ). While organizations
overwhelmingly agreed with the need to monitor
their partners security, fewer than half actually
did so.

About a third of respondents
reported at least one security incident involving
their business partners within the previous year.
Of those organizations reporting incidents,
malicious code was the most prevalent, with 43% of
respondents reporting infections, followed by
unauthorized network access (27%), denial of
service (9%), system abuse or misuse (8%), data
theft (7%) and fraud (6%).

ALL IN A DAYS WORK
Back to
School W ith the youngest of her
two daughters in college, Jan Colbert,
CPA, is on a new campus herself. Shes
been recruited to Eastern Kentucky
University by a former colleague whos a
dean.

Colbert loves the
technology at Eastern Kentuckyincluding
computers and big screens in every
classroom that allow her to quickly
display the CPA exam or AICPA Web sites.
In her spare time, shes been exploring
the byways on two wheels; an avid biker,
I can do 30 miles on a Saturday, she
tells the JofA .

Colberts students, meanwhile, will
benefit from her experience as chair of
the audit committee of the CPA Exam,
which reviews the questions they will
have to answer when the time comes to
get their certification. But does she
ever give them a little clue as to what
a question will be?

Absolutely notthey cant get anything
out of me thats not public
information, she says. But, of course,
they still try.

The results of the 2016 presidential election are likely to have a big impact on federal tax policy in the coming years. Eddie Adkins, CPA, a partner in the Washington National Tax Office at Grant Thornton, discusses what parts of the ACA might survive the repeal of most of the law.